Conferences and co-presenters

I’m noticing some trends of late, as I go through the proposals for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008.

Rails: has it lost its steam? I’d like to see some talk submissions for Ruby and Ruby on Rails users, clearly. This stuff is still hot on the web (look at Twitter, and Dopplr, for instance) and there’s lots more out there.

I’m recommending a lot of people work on talks together. I don’t know if this will happen, but we have mashups in this web 2.0 world, I don’t see why we don’t have talk mashups with 2 presenters. Having a co-presenter not only keeps your talk real, but keeps the momentum going (especially when your talk is scheduled early in the morning or after lunch). It can also help nurture yet-another-guru in the area. And if you’re worried about your language or presentation skills, having someone next to you to interject when required, probably helps, heaps.

What do you think about having a co-presenter in your talk? Are you for mashups? Against mashups?

Incidentally, I probably should plug that the CfP closes on Tuesday, October 30 2007. Submit a talk, already.

I don’t think one can force a topic to be covered. People talk about what they do. If they do less RoR, they’ll talk less about it. It’s just how it goes, not just in the web dev area, but also everywhere else. It also happens I’d like to see a topic more covered at some conference, still, that might only show I’m a bit behind in certain areas. No problem with that, it’s just there are very few people who make the flow go, but the rest of us still can be good sometimes in telling where the flow will probably turn and go with it. Railsconf, rupy et al. might be a good place to get ruby all over one’s face though :)